repeated, both in South America and over many thousand miles in the
Eastern tropics, that I am driven to conclude that it represents the
general aspect of nature at the equatorial (that is, the most tropical)
parts of the tropical regions.
How is it then, that the descriptions of travellers generally give
a very different idea? and where, it may be asked, are the glorious
flowers that we know do exist in the tropics? These questions can be
easily answered. The fine tropical flowering-plants cultivated in our
hothouses have been culled from the most varied regions, and therefore
give a most erroneous idea of their abundance in any one region. Many of
them are very rare, others extremely local, while a considerable number
inhabit the more arid regions of Africa and India, in which tropical
vegetation does not exhibit itself in its usual luxuriance. Fine and
varied foliage, rather than gay flowers, is more characteristic of those
parts where tropical vegetation attains its highest development, and in
such districts each kind of flower seldom lasts in perfection more than
a few weeks, or sometimes a few days. In every locality a lengthened
residence will show an abundance of magnificent and gaily-blossomed
plants, but they have to be sought for, and are rarely at any one time
or place so abundant as to form a perceptible feature in the landscape.
But it has been the custom of travellers to describe and group together
all the fine plants they have met with during a long journey, and thus
produce the effect of a gay and flower-painted landscape. They have
rarely studied and described individual scenes where vegetation was most
luxuriant and beautiful, and fairly stated what effect was produced
in them by flowers. I have done so frequently, and the result of these
examinations has convinced me that the bright colours of flowers have a
much greater influence on the general aspect of nature in temperate
than in tropical climates. During twelve years spent amid the grandest
tropical vegetation, I have seen nothing comparable to the effect
produced on our landscapes by gorse, broom, heather, wild hyacinths,
hawthorn, purple orchises, and buttercups.
The geological structure of this part of Celebes is interesting.
The limestone mountains, though of great extent, seem to be entirely
superficial, resting on a basis of basalt which in some places forms low
rounded hills between the more precipitous mountains. In the rocky beds
of the streams basalt is almost always found, and it is a step in this
rock which forms the cascade already described. From it the limestone
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